“How do you replace Robert De Niro’s voice?” veteran film editor Thelma Schoonmaker remarked this evening during a lengthy Q&A session at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

The three-time Oscar-winner, who appeared at Edinburgh to discuss the work of her late husband, Michael Powell, used the rhetorical question to illustrate what she described as her frustration with the practice of sound dubbing on international film releases.

“It’s just impossible,” she said, answering her question.

“One of my problems as an editor is the dubbing that goes on when you send a film to Germany or France,” she continued, describing the practice as “painful” for her as an editor.

Schoonmaker’s remarks were part of a wider story she was telling the audience in Edinburgh about Michael Powell’s impassioned be

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